The Glass Harmonica Read Free Page A

piling up on themselves like people at a dance club trying desperately to get away from a fire through a locked exit door. Doctors say she’s deaf in one ear, too, but I’m darned if I can tell how they figured that out, because she’s always angled her head at you when you’re talking, like a parrot trying to figure out what two words will make its owner hand it a cracker.
    And I don’t know why, but I feel guilty. I think it’s because I always thought it would be me—I’m the one with the bad habits, the one who drank more, who didn’t even give up smoking until the doctor and Evelyn got together and gave me an ultimatum seven or eight years ago. Still, she’s the one who needs the shoulder to lean on going up to bed, and now that I’m thinking about cigarettes again, I remember the pack I’ve still got tucked away out in the shed for when I just gotta have one, when it feels like my skin is just going to crawl right off me, and I wonder what it is I think I’m saving my health for now, anyway.
    The cops told me they’d pick up the Collins kid, so I’ve got nothing to worry about even if he did see me. At the same time, I can’t help but hope he has a little while out there, still on the run. I picture him running, looking back over his shoulder, mouth open, sucking in big gulps of air, young and strong and fast and alive. Out on the run while he can still run. I don’t know why I even think about it.
    Later, in our bedroom, lying on my back, I can see through a small gap in the curtains that the snow is coming down again, gentle and light and orange in the street lights, falling the way that snow’s always supposed to fall. The room is quiet, and everything—the pictures, the plants, the few little pieces of jewellery I’ve been able to afford to give her over the years—is in the right place, each one in the place where Evelyn decided it should go.
    And there is no 35 McKay Street, there’s just this room and the ticking heaters and the way things are supposed to be.
    And Evelyn’s rolled over on her side, back on to me.
    I can put a hand between her shoulder blades, her lying there, and she shifts back against me and I know she’s the same Evelyn she’s always been. You can look at her and not realize it, but like I’ve always said, people look at a lot of things and then don’t remember anything about them either.
    Eventually, her breathing goes long and even, with the familiar hint of a half snore that’s been bothering me for more years than I can count, and I know she’s asleep.
    Then, I can sleep too.

35
McKay Street
    RON COLLINS
    FEBRUARY 11, 2006
    H OURS EARLIER , when the snow hadn’t really started in earnest yet, Ron Collins watched the tall girl kicking the other one in front of the Supreme Court—kicking the one who was down on the ground shrieking, the swear words carrying easily through the closed windows of the car.
    â€œI get up, I’ll fucking pound ya,” the one on the ground was yelling. “I’ll show ya, ya fucking skank.”
    He watched, half interested, half bored—but the pizzas were getting cold. So Ron reached down to put the Tercel into gear, and Liz reached across from the passenger seat and held his arm just above the wrist, stopping him. “No,” she said, her voice strangely eager, almost breathless.
    It was almost fully dark by then, the big stone court building looming over the girls and throwing long, inky shadows. The snow was coming down in thin scrims in front of the street lights, softening all the angles, smoothing lines.
    It wasn’t softening the sight of the two fighting girls. Across from them, two teenaged boys were sitting on a low wall next to the courthouse steps, watching too. Probably the boyfriends, Ron thought, although neither of the two was doing anything to break up the fight. He had been startled at how wild the